Brazen Serpent

The brazen serpent is a single object that crosses three eras of the UPDV story. Moses casts it in the wilderness as the means by which snake-bitten Israelites are healed when they look at it. Generations later it survives into Hezekiah's reign as a relic the people are burning incense to, and Hezekiah breaks it in pieces and gives it the name Nehushtan. Jesus then turns the lifting up of the serpent into a figure for his own lifting up, so that whoever believes may have eternal life in him.

Made by Moses for Healing

The object originates in Moses' own hands. Scripture records: "And Moses made a serpent of bronze, and set it on the standard: and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he looked to the serpent of bronze, he lived" (Nu 21:9). Two things are fixed in that sentence. The serpent is bronze, not brass-as-ornament; and it is mounted on a standard, raised up so that the bitten can see it. The healing turns on the look — when a bitten man looked to the serpent of bronze, he lived.

Worshiped and Destroyed as Nehushtan

The same object reappears centuries later, no longer as a means of healing but as an object of worship. The narrative at 2Ki 18:4 records Hezekiah's reform: "He removed the high places, and broke the pillars, and cut down the Asherah: and he broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made; for in those days the sons of Israel burned incense to it; and he called it Nehushtan." The verse is precise about provenance — it is "the bronze serpent that Moses had made" — and about the ritual offense, the burning of incense to it. Hezekiah's response is to break it in pieces alongside the high places, the pillars, and the Asherah, and to give it the name Nehushtan. The same object that healed when looked at in the wilderness is, by Hezekiah's day, treated as something to be reduced to fragments.

A Symbol of Christ

Jesus picks up the wilderness scene as a figure for himself. Scripture records: "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up" (Jn 3:14). The verb that ties the two events together is "lifted up" — what Moses did with the serpent on the standard is what must be done with the Son of Man. The next verse states the purpose: "that whoever believes may in him have eternal life" (Jn 3:15). The pattern of looking and living from Nu 21:9 carries forward into believing and having eternal life in him. The lifting up that healed the bitten in the wilderness becomes the lifting up in which whoever believes finds eternal life.